Monkey Business.

exceprted from a blog post at Boing Boing about Nim Chimpsky

Natasha Mitchell: He even got to a point where he drank beer and smoked.

Elizabeth Hess: Yes, it was the 70s so you know it wasn't uncommon for Columbia students to be hanging around at night smoking pot, and Nim loved pot and eventually developed his own sign for give me a joint. You know chimps have the same vices that we have. Nim started the day for his entire life with a cup of coffee and as he grew older was often grumpy if he didn't get it.

That is one good monkey. Shame about him. He coulda ruled the knife fighting circuit. Could've been a contender.

MIIIINIONS!

(blast it, I can't save and post the image at work. Monarch shirt)


Buy it here.

Satoru Iwata on Friend Codes, Shitcocks

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata on Friend Codes:

First of all, I don't think the current system we have with friend codes is perfect. However, if it's an online world where you can get access to anybody without any restrictions, I as a father do not feel like allowing my daughter be engaged in that kind of world.

I can appreciate a parent not wanting their child subjected to the X-Box Live netherworld of shitcocks and skull-fucking idiocy. That's a sensible stance for a responsible parent to take. The problems, though, are in thinking that Friend Codes are a safeguard against this and restricting all users to Friend Codes.

Friend Codes don't protect your kid.
Friend Codes limit the community in which a child can participate online; one can only play online games with people on one's Friend List. But what controls the Friend List? GameFaqs, Gaming Forums, and a plethora of online sources provide children with the codes of people they do not know. Any child can add the friend code of "CandyMan69" to their Animal Crossing game and so collect peaches with CandyMan69 provided that CandyMan69 has their Friend Code as well. A flaw in the system? Yes. Friend Codes are the illusion of control against predators but actual control against playing with random people online.

Not everyone needs Friend Codes
This is, I think, the important issue. Yes, we can nitpick Friend Codes and question their utility in protecting children. But the larger issue is that not everyone needs Friend Codes. There are some people who are suited to the X-Box Live method of playing with random other people. Some people would enjoy the ability to play Animal Crossing with random other people. Limiting these users out of a desire to create the illusion of safety for minors is nonsense. So, what is sensible?

Make Friend Codes Optional
It is entirely sensible to create a system some can use and others can ignore. There is no problem with restricting minors to Friend Codes while opening up an online community to others who do not necessarily need to be protected from Pedophiles by the sensible middle-aged loli-loving men at Nintendo. Supplanting parent responsibility with a top-down method of controlling user interaction is just silly. Providing multiple channels of online play, multiple approaches to the online community would be a sensible approach. Leave Friend Codes in place for users who only ever want to interact with people whose Friend Codes they have. That's fine. But there also needs to be an open community which can revel in random matchups and the hurling of "shitcock" and "jewlizard" at one another.

We oughtn't abandon the hope of protecting minors from shitcocks. But we need to realistically assess the situation and consider the merits of Friend Codes rather than rush to the "protect teh childrenz" defense and ignore reality.

Repurposed: E-mail request for advice

I'm reposting the e-mail I just sent to a number of Hanover profs.

It's somewhat rambly, because I'm still refining what I'm looking to discuss, and at the same time, trying to quickly give a small bit of context that I take for granted... but I think it explains what I'm thinking of writing on and why. Hopefully, J and I can keep the esoteric disagreements on the nature of Academic out of this thread, and keep it to input... but.. thoughts?

-repost-
'llo all.

I'm hoping the summer finds you all well. I've set up a post/comment thread on a shared blog to bounce ideas off some friends, and in doing so, refine and spark some ideas for what would work for this thing.. and.. well.. I've got something.. I just need to figure out how to approach it correctly.

I originally discounted an idea, becuase I had the material and I knew it was worth discussing, I just didn't know where or if this would be the correct venue. It wasn't until I got involved in a half argument with a friend, and used it as an example of what I could write about that I started keying into how deeply ingrained some of the themes asked for in the request ( Nostalgia, History, Antecedents.. to some degree Material Culture, but as a character detail, illustrating Nostalgia and History again).

Let's see if I can't clarify this. There is a fairly impressive body of work, a series by James Robinson named "Starman". It was a run of comics entirely under his writing direction for the length of the story, and focused upon what's essentially the Dissaffected Slacker of the 90's, Jack Knight. He ends up being forced into taking up the Starman mantle of his Father, Ted Knight, the original Starman of the 40's, the member of the Justice Society of America.
Robinson writes a story about family, about Jack coming into his own adulthood, recognizng the nature of his relationships with family and who he is, who his father is, and so forth. Woven into this however, is something equally well done and complex, as parallel to that story is a story that acknowledges the various characters that have had the Starman name - Jack and his father, obviously, as well as characters who have had nothing to do with them, but had the same name for trademark protection reasons. This is presented as Jack encountering his antecedents and and maturing in himself from encountering them. But it's also a celebration of these disparate elements and stories, to the reader.

There's a lot more connection here ( and my copies are at school, so I can't get concrete details to back me up), but there's a look at the "Starman" legacy into the future (becuase hey, it's comics, and because the future is tangible in DC comics), with a Legion of Superheroes (in the 30th cent.) member showing up, and discovering he'll be taking up the name.. A series of Dream Sequences issues called Past Lives that have Jack speaking to his dead brother, who introduces him to abandoned DC characters with introspection upon a number of things.. more that I'd need the books to recall, I fear.

I couldn't quite get a handle on how to approach this at first, though... until I started writing a short paragraph to explain this, and utilized a term that has shown up in fan discussions. DC comics have made something of an industry and a selling point out of what they call "legacy" heroes, new characters who take up the mantle and aspects of earlier characters. This stems from the reinvention of old trademarks coming into the Silver Age (Flash, Green Lantern, Blue Beetle, etc.), and has some tieback to the other DC trope of kid sidekicks.. many of whom end up taking up the role (Kid Flash becoming the Flash, after his death).. in some ways, Starman is the series that takes this idea and makes it.. I don't know precisely.. Memorable. in some sense, bringing it from a crass publishing device into a Memorial device, one that works within the story world...

This is perhaps a bit too much at the moment, but what I'm looking at, and conisdering is Examining the idea of a Legacy Hero as a sort of concrete example of History, how the device of it atttempts to graft importance to the new character through nostalgia for the previous, antecedent characters, and to examine this through the way Robinson's Starman builds that nostalgia by showing how his character interacts with the previous, reminding the audience who these characters were, why they were enjoyed, and how this new character is similar and how he differs from those previous characters.

Talk about burying your lede, here. I'm still muddling through and chipping away at this massive marble block of an idea, obviously. Does this seem reasonable? Hoping and Assuming that I've given you all enough of a small context on what "Starman" is, what a legacy hero is, etc? Does it sound like it should be further refined and restricted? Expanded?

Basically, just interested in opinions.. Thanks for your time, and back to scanning legal documents for me.

-Roscoe

BG Paper Notepad and Sounding Board

So, as everyone's aware, Mikey linked me to Bowling Green's call for submissions on a Comic Book and Popular Culture paper.

I've been hashing out some ideas, and frankly, need a place to list them, disect them, and get input.

Some relatively narrow, and easily researched options:

The Batman Campfire Story - Three seperate versions of the same story, with roughly a decade between each iteration, the story involves kids telling their interpretation of Batman around a campfire. This story is taken across mediums, from the original comic, to the kid's 90s' animated series, and then to a Direct to DVD adult-aimed animation, with differing needs and tones. An interesting discussion of medium and opportunity, as well room to comment on further Batman references ( the cartoon nods towards Dark Knight Returns, the 90's movies, etc)

Riffs on the Superman Origin - The Superman Orgin story is a wellspring for Elseworld/What if type adaptations - What if the rocket landed elsewhere, what if it landed elseWHEN, etc, giving rise to alternative Superman characters, such as the Communist Red Son, the Cleese written True Brit, and so on. This would also have room to discuss Superman analogues, Marvel's Hyperion, who is Government Raised Superman, Invincible's Omni-Man, the forerunner of an alien invasion, Valentino's normalman, the parody character, etc. Raises issues of identity, the immigrant role, political indoctrination, etc.

Costume Changes and Reversions - An examination of the regular occurance of drastically changing a character's costume, and the tendency for these changes to be ephemral, and short-lived. Superman is a great focus for this, with the "Superman Red, Superman Blue" stories (both the original, and the modern 'Electric Superman', the "Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen" story that introduces a number of Superman replacements, and more. This also has some overlap with the various Alternative 'Elseworld' Superman stories that have the character raised elsewhere. This is on some level a discussion of iconography and nostalgia, as well speaking to temporary aesthetic choices of the comic market ( an 80's costume is not a 90's costume, and neither are a 40's costume)

And a handful of other, less developed, topics and ideas. Some of these would require much more in the way of research material I don't have, some are things I have deep interest in, but unable to pin down a discussion, and some are just topics that haven't quite gelled yet.

DC's Suicide Squad - An Eighties examination of a politically-motivated semi-covert use of criminals (superpowered) to engage in espionage in exchange for sentence reductions. Gets deeply involved in discussions of politics, nationalism and terrorism.

Transmetropolitan - Huner S. Thompson in the bizzare future. I have an absurd ammount of love for this series, deeply tied into discussions of subcultures, material culture, futurism, and politics. Unfortunately, I haven't a clue what I'd like to say about this, and my series is stuck in storage.

DC's Starman - Similarly, deeply enamored of this series, with it's indepth examination of family and history, it links a scattered collection of attempts to keep the trademark on the Starman name, and weaves a tale of DC publishing and continuity history and nostalgia in through a coming of age / recognition of self story.

Morrison's Animal Man or Flex Mentallo - I don't have a thing to write here, but would love to go into something regarding Morrison's structuralism, making his characters cognizant of their existance in a comic book. No way in hell I can discipline myself into keeping this coherrent and restrained, I fear.

An examination/argument for comic books as filling the role of Modern Myth - something I toyed with during Banta's spring term Classical Mythology class. Myths often being on some level simplistic and contradictory, involving larger than life, hypersexualized figures imparting simplistic morality while not exactly portraying the messages they impart. Plenty of places to go from here, what with Kirby's influence all over Marvel and DC - Thor, Herc., the New Gods, the Eternals, etc. Proabably a bit too ambitious.

Anything from Oni, or other Indy comics taht I have? The Flight anthologies are interesting here, but the biggest issue for these is that I don't have access to them right now, so I have no clue what I might talk about regarding them.

Anyways, this is just me, trying to muddle through what I might talk about, and bounce ideas off folks. Any thoughts/disagreements/piqued interests?

Edit: Here's the link to the submissions request

Ledger's Joker: Not the Crazy One

More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary furtherers of man whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have rarely felt like friends of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but eventually also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscience of their time.

Heath Ledger's Joker is not a crazy person, not a deranged sociopath preoccupied with murder or death. Joker's aim is not personal vendettas or individual, focused acts of strife. The Joker is not concerned with wealth, with power. The Joker is not even concerned for his own well-being or self-preservation. Heath Ledger's Joker, the most accurate portrayal of the fictional Joker character, is a Joker who is wholly sane, wholly cognizant of his place within the universe. And even though you might not recognize it, and the film, as is its obligation, masks it? The Joker is the one who is right. The Joker is correct.

That's what is so amazing about philosophy, about critical thinking, about objectively assessing reality and achieving a full, total appreciation for the way things are. When one does that, when the curtains are thrown aside and a character accurately assesses reality and acts appropriately they are portrayed as the villian, they are the one cast aside. They are the one who those addicted to the fabricated system feel compelled to stop. The Athenians killed Socrates. The Church censored Galileo. Batman beat up The Joker.

That's what is so amazing about Dark Knight. Dark Knight is a celebration of the herd mentality, the preservation of the social system of fabricated rules and accepted norms which aids continuation of the species. Even Batman, for his part, is a champion of that system and despite his ability to recognize its problems his goal, first and foremost, is the protection and continuation of the system. The Joker has no such problem, no such self-inflicted dilemma. The Joker's entire motivation throughout the film is to drag Gotham, kicking and screaming, out of the cave and into the light.

In describing the natural state of man Hobbes wrote: "the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The real conflict in Dark Knight, the actual fight and dilemma, is not Joker versus Gotham or Joker versus Batman. Dark Knight portrays the conflict between truth and idealized, false, fabricated faux-normalcy; our struggle against reality. Joker in his scarred, ugly, tattered self is that truth, that solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and shorty reality in which we live. Batman's character, interestingly enough, is clean, conformed, polished. Yet that conformity, that cleanliness and polish are in actuality little more than fabricated armor meant to protect his frail self from truth. Even the Batman identity itself is little more than armor to shield Bruce Wayne, the true person, from reality.

That's why I'll continually offer tongue-in-cheek praise for Dark Knight again and again. That's why I'll probably leave work early to catch another matinee. What is compelling is not the cinematography, the action scenes. It's not an enjoyable film or a compelling story. Dark Knight is a celebration, a defense, if you will, of humanity turning a blind eye to the truth. Dark Knight is a cinematic argument in favor of clinging to life within the cave. Batman is our inability to accept reality and our struggle against the facticity of our being. Heath Ledger's Joker is truth. And our reaction to Joker belies our fundamental nature as a frightened herd clinging to our self-sustained safeguards which protect us not against an external threat, but rather the objective, empirical truth of the world in which we live.

Marvel Movies: The Three Fight Rule

So, Marvel is making their own movies now, and I enjoyed Iron Man quite a bit, and The Incredible Hulk was also on the correct track, but what I want to talk about specifically is the meting out of fight scenes.

Iron Man followed a three fight formula that was essentially "fight to survive", then "become an irresistible force" then "meet an unmovable object". The Hulk complicated the system a bit by virtue of the Hulk being in all instances an irresistible force, but there were still three main fights.

To elaborate, the fight to survive is the origin fight in Iron Man's case, and the factory fight for the Hulk. This is a battle not necessarily initiated by the hero, but is one that results in the unrefined application of force on the hero's part in overcoming an immediate threat. The becoming an irresistible force is the recognition that the power that was applied in the fight to survive could be used to liberate others. Iron Man takes down terrorists and Hulk protects Betty. This fight to some extent is a shift between a selfish and selfless incarnation of the hero. Fight three, the meeting of the unmovable object, introduces the foe who is equal or greater to the hero in potency. This fight changes the rules, and all the overwhelming power shown by the hero in fights one and two are now moot in the face of this opponent who has in some way mimicked the hero's capabilities. This is the hero fighting the selfish version of himself, and for me, this is the most interesting show down. Iron Man can only distract and deflect Iron Monger while Pepper delivers the killing blow, and the Hulk has to rely on the source of his problem, his anger, to overpower Abomination.

The virtue of having a relatively small number of distinct battle sequences is, to me at least, that it opens up a large portion of the movie to inaction. Stark has time to be Tony Stark and to experiment with his technology, and Banner gets to worry about contaminating people and figuring out how to fix his problem and all while both of them sort of get to have a relationship with a female. And all of this inaction makes the subsequent action much more important, and it keeps inaction out of the action. Bring Singer, I think, in his X-Men movies had to mix a bit of action and inaction due to the fact that he had such a large number of characters who needed to perform in such a short period of time, hence the furious cycling between the use of words and fists throughout almost the entire movie. Daredevil took this to something of an extreme through its use of trivial action sequences and banal dialogue. Had Marvel made that movie, I would bet that Matt wouldn't have sparred with Elektra in the park, and we would have gotten a better court case instead. In other words, Matt would be a character who fights in the law courts, and Daredevil would be a character who is his alter ego and fights in the streets, instead of the sketchy outline of Matt that, by the film's account, exists largely as a way to humanize a guy who dresses in fetish gear and beats the shit out of Michael Clark Duncan (an unconfirmed retard) and Colin Farell (America's town drunk).

I hope the three-fight trend continues, because I enjoy the way it keeps the mild-mannered and the super distinct and allows both to exist on the same film. I also appreciate how it puts each battle to work advancing not only the plot, but the character both in and out of hero mode. For me, three fights is the golden rule.